People with issues #168

Kevin’s exchange year at the university in Amsterdam allowed him to develop as a person, far from the confines of his home in Salt Lake. His only problem was his complete absence of any sense of balance, compounded by spending far too much time in the local “coffee shop.”

View from a Rhino House: “You take the high road & I’ll take….”

In the US (where else?) a member of the Washington state House has reluctantly apologized for insisting that bicyclists cause pollution by exhaling carbon dioxide, to a local cycles store owner.

Ed Orcutt, a Republican (go on, you guessed that part, didn’t you?) member of the state House of Representatives Transportation Committee, said, not unreasonably, in an email to a bike shop owner that drivers & cyclists should both share the burden of preserving the roads they use. Then it all started to go downhill…..

“You claim that it is environmentally friendly to ride a bike,” Orcutt wrote to Dale Carlson, the proprietor of several bicycle shops who had voiced concern that a proposed $25 fee on bicycle sales of $500 or more would hurt his business.

“But if I am not mistaken, a cyclists has increased heart rate & respiration. Since carbon dioxide is deemed a greenhouse gas & a pollutant, bicyclist are actually polluting when they ride,” Orcutt wrote.

Yesterday, Orcutt managed an equally odd apology (to constituents, rather than the original recipient of his views on saving the planet).

“In looking back, it was not a point worthy of even mentioning so I apologize.”

Carlson wrote an email to lawmakers on the House Transportation Committee, saying cyclists should not be discouraged from an activity that is “healthy for humans & the planet.”

“I thought that was so off the wall – that (Orcutt) was being sarcastic or something,” Carlson later said.

For the record, Orcutt is correct that a human does produce more carbon dioxide while riding a bike than when sitting in a car, however the pollutants produced by the car (including the carbon dioxide, soot, carbon monoxide – et al) exceed the total human respiratory waste by something in excess of 2.000-fold – assuming there are 5 lazy cyclists in the damn thing. The question of relative damage to infrastructure from respective cyclist / automobile weight is fairly obvious I suspect – even to the good members of the Washington state political club.

Maybe we should all be a little more selective about which species on the planet we would like to see survive.

“Look at him, thoughtless, polluting wrecker….. It shouldn’t be allowed!”